The present invention relates to an apparatus for and a method of generating a unique code and a program and a recording medium, and in particular, to a technique for use with an information system providing services only to users beforehand registered thereto. The technique is applicable, for example, to access management when a user accesses the system, identification of a person receiving a service provided by the system for pay, and entrance and exit management for entrance into and exit from important facilities and rooms.
An authentication method using information of a living body or biometric information has been proposed, for example, in JP-A-09-198501. That is, there is provided a fingerprint-collation entrance-exit managing system to mange entrance into and exit from a room. The system includes a host device including a file in which personal information such as an identifier number and entrance admission information to enter a room and registered fingerprint data are stored with a correspondence established therebetween and a gate being connected to the host device and including a fingerprint collating section for storing therein the personal information and the registered fingerprint data downloaded from the file and collating the data with a fingerprint impression of a person. The fingerprint collating section of the gate includes a controller for updating, when the person is confirmed or identified by the collation between the fingerprint impression and the registered fingerprint data, the registered fingerprint data by adding a time stamp thereto. The host device includes a control processing section which collects the registered fingerprint data including the time stamp to update the registered fingerprint data and which sends the registered fingerprint data thus updated to the gate according to the entrance admission information of the personal information.
There has been proposed a fingerprint collating method in a system, for example, in JP-A-10-124668. According to this article, the system includes a fingerprint registering and collating device and a fingerprint collating system terminal. The terminal includes a fingerprint image collecting section for collecting a fingerprint image of a user, an information input section for inputting user information, a fingerprint image storage for storing the fingerprint image collected by the collecting section, a fingerprint reference point detector for detecting a position aligning fingerprint reference point from the fingerprint image, and an image separating section for separating a partial image from fingerprint image according to a separating position indicated by the fingerprint registering and collating device. The fingerprint registering and collating device includes a registered fingerprint information storage for storing fingerprint information registered thereto in advance, a separating position determining section for determining a separating position of a partial image necessary for fingerprint collation, a partial image storage for storing the partial image separated from the fingerprint image, and a feature point collating section for conducting collation for feature points of the fingerprint image. In the system, the fingerprint collating system terminal and the fingerprint registering and collating device exchange, through data communication, data items including the position aligning fingerprint reference point, the separating position of the partial image necessary for fingerprint collation, and the partial image separated from the fingerprint image to thereby achieve the fingerprint collation.
Also, there has been proposed a fingerprint collating apparatus, for example, in JP-A-10-149446. The apparatus includes a data processing circuit for extracting features from image information obtained from a fingerprint detecting section and a comparator for comparing the features processed by the data processing circuit with data which is stored in a storage and for which feature extraction is beforehand conducted.
However, in the conventional person authentication using biometric information of a living body, it is required that the features extracted from the information as a basis of authentication are beforehand stored to be kept on the side of the authentication system. The features of the biometric information of the user beforehand stored and kept on the system side are called a template. The template is information (personal information) to identify the person. There remains hence a problem to be solved, that is, from a viewpoint of privacy protection, the template is required to be protected at a great cost.